The story of a customer who took home mugs given to her by a Starbucks employee and is now facing larceny and theft charges has gone viral.
The story was verified by a media outlet, Money Today, which reported on April 1 that a Starbucks located in Sejong City had filed a police report against a female on February 13.
The female customer’s sister originally had uploaded her story on an online community forum on March 31, which has since gone viral. According to the poster, her sister had purchased a tumbler and drink at the Starbucks on February 12. When she went to pick up her order, she found that there were two mugs that she didn’t purchase in addition to her order.
The female customer’s sister wrote. “When my sister saw that there were items she didn’t purchase, she asked if she received the right order. She was told yes, and when she stated she didn’t purchase the mugs, she was told it was fine for her to take them home.”
The customer’s sister further alleges, “Because the drink we were waiting for was a promotion item for buying the tumbler when the employee told us to take the mugs home, we thought this too was part of the promotion.”
According to Starbucks, they filed a report to contact us because they did not have our information which is nonsense. They treated us as thieves without verifying the situation.
—Customer’s sister
The sister also wrote that when her father had spoken with the Starbucks manager to clarify the misunderstanding, he was rudely told that there were no mistakes and was told his daughters had indeed committed theft.
Starbucks stated that when viewing the CCTV footage, the female customer was seen verifying the items. The fact that she had known she had items that she did not purchase and still walked out warranted the police report.
After the customer’s story had gone viral in an interview with Money Today, a Starbucks Korea representative admitted they did file a report. The representative expressed regret, “It seems this was due to a miscommunication with the customers. We are currently working with her to resolve the issue, so incidents like this don’t occur again.”
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